The Girl Who Lived Twice

by David Lagercrantz

  It was half past nine in the evening and she realised how hungry she was. She had scarcely eaten since breakfast. She walked past the Victoria cinema and Göta Lejon theatre and, although she was definitely in a better mood, that uncomfortable feeling would not leave her. She looked out across Medborgarplatsen.

  A long line of youngsters were queuing in the rain for tickets to some concert or other, and she was about to hurry down into the Tunnelbana when she gave a sudden start and turned, looking right and left. She saw nothing out of the ordinary; no shadow from the past, nothing, and she hurried down the stairs with her case, past the ticket gates and onto the platform, trying to reassure herself that all was well.

  Not until she got off the Tunnelbana at Central Station and bustled along in the rain down Hamngatan, past Kungsträdgården and out onto Blasieholmen did she begin to worry again, and she quickened her pace. She was almost running and out of breath as she burst into the hotel lobby and went up the curved staircase to the reception. A young woman, hardly more than twenty years old, gave her a welcoming smile and she responded with “Good evening”, but then she heard footsteps behind her and that put her off completely. What was the name in which Mikael had booked the room? She knew it began with a B … Boman, Brodin, Brodén … Bromberg?

  “We have a reservation in the name of …” and then she hesitated. She would have to check her mobile, and that was going to seem odd, she thought – and certainly squalid. When she saw that it actually was Boman, she said the name so quietly that the receptionist did not hear and she had to repeat it, more loudly this time. At that point she remembered the footsteps behind her on the stairs and turned to look.

  But there was no-one. A man with long hair in a denim jacket was, however, just leaving the hotel and she wondered about that as she checked in. Had the man been up there only briefly? That was strange, surely. Maybe the hotel looked too expensive. She put it out of her mind.

  Or she tried to, at least. She took her key card, went up in the lift and opened the door to the room, where she studied the double bed with the pale-blue sheets and wondered briefly what to do next. She decided to have a bath, and took a small bottle of red wine from the minibar and ordered a hamburger and chips from room service. But nothing helped. Not the food, not the alcohol or the bath. Nothing brought down her pulse, and now she was wondering what was keeping Blomkvist.

  Janek Kowalski did not actually live on Dalagatan. But they did gain access from there and, after crossing an inner courtyard, emerged on Västeråsgatan, where they slipped in through another street entrance and took a lift to the fifth floor. His was a large apartment, not unpleasant but chaotic, the home of a bachelor, an old-fashioned intellectual who lacked neither money nor taste but could no longer be bothered to keep the place tidy and uncluttered.

  There was too much of everything – too many bowls and knick-knacks and paintings, and too many books and folders. They were lying around all over the place. Kowalski himself was unshaven and dishevelled, a bohemian, especially without the suit he had been wearing at the embassy. He must have been about seventy-five and was wearing a thin cashmere sweater with a few moth holes.

  “My dear friends. I’ve been so worried for you,” he said, and he hugged Forsell and kissed Rebecka on both cheeks.

  There was no doubt that the two knew each other well. Kowalski had laid out a pair of corduroys, a shirt and a V-neck jumper, and when Forsell had changed he joined Kowalski in the kitchen, where they whispered together for twenty minutes before emerging with a tray with tea, a plate of English sandwiches and a bottle of white wine. Both of them looked at her with grave faces.

  “My dear Rebecka,” Kowalski said. “Your husband has asked me to be perfectly frank and I have agreed, albeit with some reluctance. I have to confess that I’m not very good at this sort of thing. But I’ll do my best to talk openly and I beg your forgiveness in advance, should I fail to live up to my commitment.”

  She did not like his tone; it sounded both apologetic and pretentious at the same time. Perhaps he was nervous. Certainly his hand was shaking as he poured the tea.

  “I should begin by telling you what I really do,” he said. “It’s thanks to me that the two of you met.”

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was I who sent Johannes off to Everest. I know that sounds awful, but Johannes was willing. He even insisted. He’s a man who’s at home in the wilds, is he not?”

  “Now I’m lost,” she said.

  “Johannes and I met in Russia in a professional capacity and became friends. I realised early on that he was a man of exceptional ability.”

  “In what respect?”

  “In every respect, Rebecka. He may sometimes have been a little hasty and too eager, but he was, in fact, a superlative officer.”

  “So you too were in the military?”

  “I was …” – he seemed to struggle – “… a Pole who became British as a child. My parents were political refugees and old England was good to them, so that is perhaps why I saw it as my duty to join the Foreign Office.”

  “M.I.6?”

  “Well, let’s say no more than is strictly necessary. In any case, I settled here after retiring, not just out of love for the country, but because of one or two complications which are, in a way, connected to the business we were involved in back then. You should know, my dear, that Johannes and I had a common interest at the time which was risky enough, even without Everest.”

  “And what was that?”

  “It was to do with G.R.U. defectors and moles, both actual and in the pipeline, and also, I should probably add, imaginary ones, to which we decided to apply our combined wisdom. My group was made aware that a small unit within the Swedish Security Police had got hold of a major asset from the G.R.U., a man who became far too well known after his death because of somebody you have recently had dealings with.”

  “You’re speaking in riddles.”

  “I did warn you. I do not find this easy. I’m talking about Mikael Blomkvist, who broke the story of the so-called Zalachenko affair. There has been too much said about that except, perhaps, the most important thing of all, the thing that was being discreetly whispered in our ears at the time.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Well, um … how should I put this? I need to give you a bit of background first. There was a department in Säpo which protected Alexander Zalachenko – the G.R.U. agent who defected – using any means available, because he was supplying them with what they believed to be unique information on the Russian military intelligence services.”

  “That’s right,” she exclaimed. “And he had a daughter, didn’t he, Lisbeth Salander? She had a dreadful time of it.”

  “Correct. Zalachenko was given pretty much a free rein. He could do whatever he wanted – mistreat his family and build up a crime empire – as long as he delivered the secrets. It was decency sacrificed for a greater good.”

  “National security.”

  “I wouldn’t call it anything as noble as that. Rather a sense of exclusivity, of possessing information no-one else had, which a number of gentlemen at Säpo found incredibly exciting. But it’s possible – and this is what my group suspected – that they didn’t even have that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We had reports to the effect that Zalachenko remained loyal to Russia. That he was a double agent until the day he died, and passed back much more to the G.R.U. than he ever let on to Säpo.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  “That’s exactly how we felt. But at first all we had were suspicions, and we tried to find ways of getting them confirmed. After a time we heard about a man, a lieutenant colonel who was officially a civilian acting as a consultant to the travel industry, but who had in fact worked undercover for G.R.U. internal security and had picked up on a massive case of corruption.”

  “To do with what?”

  “The links be
tween a number of intelligence agents and the Zvezda Bratva crime syndicate. He was apparently furious that the collaboration should have been allowed to continue, and was said to have resigned his position at the G.R.U. in protest, and in order to pursue his great passion – high-altitude climbing.”

  “Are we talking about Viktor Grankin?” Rebecka said.

  “We are indeed talking about the late Grankin. An extremely interesting person, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely, but—”

  “You were his expedition doctor. That surprised us, in fact.”

  “It surprised me too,” she said thoughtfully. “But I too had a crazy urge for adventure at the time. I’d been told about Grankin at a conference in Oslo.”

  “We know.”

  “So go on.”

  “Grankin gave the impression of being very down to earth, didn’t he? Straightforward and uncomplicated. But he was, in fact, unbelievably intelligent and complex, a man of deep feeling. He was torn by divided loyalties – between his love of his country and his sense of honour and decency. In February 2008 we began to be fairly certain not only that he knew about Zalachenko’s double-dealing and his cooperation with the mafia, but also that he himself was in danger. That he was frightened of the G.R.U. and in need of protection and new friends. That is what gave me the idea to send Johannes on his expedition to Everest. We thought that an adventure of that calibre would foster camaraderie and closeness.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said again, turning to Johannes. “So you were there to recruit him to the West?”

  “That was the dream scenario, of course,” Kowalski said.

  “But what about Svante Lindberg?”

  “Lindberg is the unhappy part of this story,” Kowalski said. “But we didn’t know that then. At the time, his recruitment seemed like a very reasonable request from Johannes. Of course, we would have preferred him to take one of our people instead. But Lindberg knew his Russia, had worked closely with Johannes at Must and, above all, he was an experienced climber. On the face of it he was the perfect companion. Luckily – and we’re very grateful for that now – we didn’t give him the full picture. He never found out my name, or even that it was more of a British than a Swedish operation.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, as it all began to sink in. “So the whole expedition was an intelligence operation?”

  “It turned into an awful lot more, my dear Rebecka. Johannes met you, after all. But yes … he went in the line of duty and we kept a very close eye on it.”

  “That’s crazy. I had absolutely no idea.”

  “I’m sorry that you should have to hear about it in these circumstances.”

  “Well, how did it go?” she said. “I mean … before it all went wrong?”

  Forsell shrugged, and once again it was Kowalski who answered.

  “Johannes and I have a slightly different view on that. In my opinion, he did an excellent job. He managed to build trust and early on it looked promising. But it’s true that the situation grew more and more tense and we had to put a lot of pressure on Viktor. We took advantage of him at a critical stage, before the climb started. So yes, Johannes is probably right. There was too much at stake. But above all—”

  “We were missing some crucial information,” Forsell said.

  “Yes, unfortunately,” Kowalski said. “But how could we have known? Nobody in the West suspected it at the time, not even the F.B.I.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “Stan Engelman.”

  “What about him?”

  “He had been connected to Zvezda Bratva since he started to build hotels in Moscow in the ’90s. Viktor was aware of this, but we were not.”

  “How come he knew?”

  “It was one of the things he had ferreted out in the course of his work at the G.R.U., but, as I said, double-dealing was part of his job so he pretended to be close to Stan. Secretly he thought he was despicable.”

  “And stole his wife.”

  “I think the romance was more of a bonus.”

  “Or else it was the trigger factor,” Forsell said.

  “Could you please speak in plain English?” Rebecka said.

  “I think Johannes is saying that it was the love affair, and the things Klara told him, that prompted Viktor to act,” Kowalski said.

  “Meaning?”

  “If he wasn’t going to be able to squeeze his colleagues in the G.R.U., he could at least damage a massively corrupt American.”

  CHAPTER 26

  27.viii

  Sometimes Galinov would ask her: “What does he mean to you today? What are your thoughts about him?” Most of the time she did not answer, but once she said: “I remember feeling like I had been chosen,” and it really was true.

  There had been a time when her father’s lies were the best thing in her life, and she was long convinced that it was she who wielded the power, that she enchanted him, and not the other way around. It was an illusion that was inevitably snatched from her and replaced by a gaping abyss. And yet … the memory of that special feeling lingered on, and sometimes she would forgive Zala the way you might forgive a wild animal. The only thing that never went away was her hatred of Lisbeth and Agneta, and now, lying in her bed on Strandvägen, she used it to brace herself, the way she had as a teenager, when she was forced to reinvent herself and create a new Camilla, free of all constraints.

  The rain was beating down on Strandvägen. Sirens were howling and she could hear footsteps coming closer, rhythmic, confident footsteps. It was Galinov, and she got up and opened the door. He smiled at her. She knew that the two of them shared the hatred and the feeling of being special.

  “We may have some encouraging news after all,” he said.

  She did not answer.

  “Not a big deal in itself,” he said, “but it could be an opening. The woman Blomkvist was seen with out at Sandhamn has just checked into Hotel Lydmar.”

  “And?”

  “Well, she lives here in the city, doesn’t she? So why would she go to a hotel unless she wants to meet someone who’d rather not be seen at her place, or in their own home?”

  “Such as Blomkvist?”

  “Spot on.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  Galinov ran his fingers through his hair.

  “The location isn’t great. There are outdoor cafés and bars, and too many people around in the evening. But Sandström—”

  “Is he being difficult?”

  “No, no, on the contrary, I’ve got him toeing the line. He says he can have a car waiting around the corner, even the ambulance one of his minions had the bright idea to steal, and I—”

  “And you, Ivan?”

  “There may be a part for me to play too. It would appear that Blomkvist and I have a common concern, if Bogdanov is to be trusted.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We share an interest in the Swedish Minister of Defence and some of his past dealings.”

  Camilla felt her energy returning. “Good,” she said. “Then I suggest you get moving.”

  Rebecka had not yet managed to digest the information, but she did not allow herself time to do so. She could see that there was worse to come.

  “We’ve now understood that Engelman deliberately chose Grankin’s expedition for his wife because he was convinced that Viktor was one of them,” Kowalski went on. “But Grankin had been investigating the syndicate and was by now an angry man. I believe that Johannes, with his talent for building trust, had got him to the point where he wanted to talk: he had sowed the seed, so to speak. I think Klara simply carried on where Johannes left off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Klara got Viktor to share what was on his mind. I think they egged each other on. She told him what a swine her husband was behind closed doors, and Viktor contributed accounts of Stan’s activities in Zvezda Bratva.”

  “Love made them want to share,” she
said.

  “Yes, maybe that’s how it was. At least, that is Johannes’ theory. But it doesn’t in the end matter so much. What was important was that it leaked out and made its way to Manhattan – however careful they tried to be.”

  “Did someone spill the beans?”

  “Your poor unfortunate Sherpa.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Nima would surely never have betrayed them?”

  “I don’t think he saw it that way,” Kowalski said. “He’d been paid extra to look after Klara and report what she got up to at Base Camp. He probably felt he was doing his job.”

  “How much had he found out?”

  “We don’t know for sure, but it was enough to put him in danger later on. I’ll get to that. We do know that Engelman somehow heard about the love affair, and that alone aroused a great deal of anger and suspicion, and there were others who obliged with more information so that, in the end, Stan knew exactly what was at stake. Not only his marriage, but also his future as a businessman. Possibly even his days as a free man.”

  “Who was responsible for the other leaks?”

  “I’m sure you can guess,” Kowalski said. “But you asked about Nima Rita and how he could possibly have passed anything on. Don’t forget that he was worried and angry, like so many other Sherpas that year.”

  “Was it to do with his religious beliefs?” she said.

  “Yes, and also his wife, Luna. Klara had treated her badly, hadn’t she? Nima had his own reasons for not feeling any loyalty towards her.”

  “That’s not fair to him, Janek,” Forsell said. “Nima didn’t have it in for anyone. He was like Viktor. He had divided loyalties. People told him: do this, do that. He ended up carrying everything on his shoulders and was given orders and counter-orders, and in the end it broke him. He had much too heavy a load, and yet it was he and none of the others who suffered pangs of conscience.”

  “Sorry, Johannes, I only experienced it at a distance, so to speak. It’s perhaps better if you take over now,” Kowalski said.